Light diffusing fiber (LDF) has been described in commonly owned U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2001-0122646, Optical Fiber Illumination Systems and Methods. In certain applications of LDF, for example, in closed spaces for which an exit is difficult such as an airplane cabin, it is required that the light diffusing fiber have flame retardant properties. The typical LDF has glass core doped with RAL (random airline), a low index primary polymer coating, a standard secondary coating layer on top of the primary layer, and an additional scattering layer coating layer on the top of the secondary coating to produce additional light diffusing properties on the walls of the fiber. In some applications the fiber can have extra layer of phosphor coating to provide an additional color option. The flame retardant coating (“FRC”) is applied as the last layer in existing LDF fibers; that is, after the application of the foregoing layers. However, the step of additionally providing this flame retardant layer on top of all the other layers adds complexity and costs to the manufacturing process. The present disclosure is directed to a LDF with flame retardant properties that does not entail the complexity and costs of standard FLDs while providing equivalent of better performance.